Reception improves with SER 1.2 ROM over WM2003?? HOW?

[zack31]

Hello XDA forumers,

This is my first post, so be gentle :)

I was sick and tired of poor signal and performance of my sx56 phone for about 2 years. I ran into this forum over past weekend, was amazed and started to fiddle around with various ROM images.

I tried several but beleive it or not, Special Edition ROM put together by these people was the best. Right now my device has a RSU from ATT upgrade of WM2003. I didn't touch it. And with the SER i get an awsome performance and signal strength. So first of all, great job guys.

I would just live with this ROM forever, but curosity has gotten the best of me.

So the question for the fathers of SER is: how did you do it? Did you simply take O2 ROM and cooked it with some other applications. Did you make any coding changes to the RIL? I cooked several versions of PPC 2003 ROM from stefan's kitchen, but couldn't get my phone perf to get quiet there. Was that, that 2002 was just a better OS? Microsoft screwed something up in 2003?

I have got quiet a few questions on my mind!! as you can tell!!

I would like to develop a similar special room that is based on 2003 system. my reasons for insisting on 2003 is that .net applications work with it (e.g. voice command).

Thanks for all your work. love you guys!!

[zack31]

err, damn newbies.. :) I thought the information about my phone would populate from my profile: Here is what i got now on my phone:

SX56, ATT, ROM 3.17.03 (Special Edition ROM 1.2) RSU A.33.03

[bob190cm]

I hate WM2003, too! The SER by XDA-developers was a marvellous thing! But there are a few reasons to give 2002 up:

- it is VERY slow with application handling comparing to WM2003 :!:
- as you mentioned, no .NET there...
- IE supports older versions of JS
- worse Phone, SMS interfaces. No new "connecrion/phone status" bubble, that allows to connect to GPRS, for example.
- in general, most programmers today aim the WM2003 (even though some of their apps work with PPC2002PE, too)

On the other side:

- it takes less space (both RAM and ROM) :!:
- some people (like me) like older interfaces (especially "connections" tab in settings!)
- it was not this buggy (multiple windows in IE didn't close itself without my permission, could turn off LCD to play music with less battery consumption)...
- I expected few more things to be supported in WM2003...

[zack31]

bob, thanks for your reply and insightful thoughts.

My question still remains, why do i see better signal strength with Special Edition Rom 1.2 compared to WM2003. It is puzzling me. This is a questions directly for SER developers? What did you do to get a better signal reception? or WM2002 was a better os for radio reception?? Is the antena graphic signal is bit magnified than what it is?

I mean you guys wont beleive, i actually have my phone back after 2 years of mucking around with it. I can actually make calls and recieve calls in the area that i live. Now it still roams over to cingular, but even get a full bar signal with cingular. I was ready to drop the whoe pocket pc phone thing and now .. well.

I request and hope attention from the SER guys. I would like to make or participate in making Special Edition for WM2003. I love the OS; hate the signal that i get with it.

[bob190cm]

I don't think they changed anything in OS code, possibly tweakers, included in SER did. There was GPRSconnection thing, that allowed not to disconnect from GPRS on power off...
Concerning signal strength, do you feel you loose signal more often or it is all about how many lines it shows on taskbar? In addition, did you change PDA's ROM only or GSM ROM, too? (in these machines there are three ROMs: PDA, GSM/GPRS and bootloader)
SER2003: I think there will be no SER2003 - noone needs it. You can get whatever you personally need in ROM kitchens. If you want to help, you can suggest something LumpiStefan should add.

[zack31]

I have only been playing with the OS part. Didn't touch bootloader or RSU.

that is somewhat correct that i have been measuring the signal strength by the number of bars shown. It is now confirmed that the delta of bars between Special Editition ROM and WM2003 is at-least 2 bars, with device sitting at exact same spot.

BUT I put SER on and used the phone for 1 whole day. It had a great performance. As I said, i was able to make calls from ares where i have never been able to before. I am today trying a phone with a well cooked version of wm2003 from stephan's kitchen, and i am have issues so far!!

question remains: What is it in SER that improved signal so greatly. :?

[Linger1974]

I'm from Toronto Canada and use my SX56 on the Fido network here. I'm also receiving very poor signal strength, even in downtown Toronto. Should I drive outside the city, forget it. I still carry around my Nokia 3390 just in case I need to make a call while driving home.

I'm using the A.30.09 ENG rom, along with A.33.03 radio version. I'm wondering if anyone has knowledge of a better radio version than this. I've gotten quite good at bootloading my new roms into place, but I'm wondering if there's an easy way of just doing the radio version?

Lastly, and I have to ask this question because of my lack of knowledge, but in respect to the bands (800/900 - 1800/1900), is there a way to force the phone to use any certain band for it's connectivity to the network? Which one is generally stronger? Does the phone automatically seek out the strongest signal from any of the bands and then use that?

I just wanna push my phone to the limit and get the best reception possible.

Thanks for any and all replies!

[jarekt]

I had A.30.09 from ATT RS 3.25 (i had 4.21 before but i've changed it to improve radio performance. Unfortunatelly reception remained the same) and i had no reason to comply. All indicators shows poor reception but i had no problems with using my MDA (good voice quality and no dropped calls).

using this software http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=14491
i checked reception and I had about 95 dBm indoor and 80 dBm outdoor (for MDA minimum strength is 113 and max is 51).

After month or 2 i have changed ROM into 4.1.16 from T-mobile and all seems to works much better!

No i have 80 dBm indoor and 70 outdoor!!! That's what I call great improvement. Unfortunatelly I faced another problem now - today my MDA 2 times (one during measurements :P) lost reception at all and I had to restart radio modul to get signal again. I have totaly no idea why this had happend but I'm affraid i cant use this rom anymore :( Offcourse this new problem may be caused by something diffrent (like strange software form lumpistefan kitchen :P) so I'll try to deactivate as much software as possible and use my unit for several days from now on.

If U can try software mensioned above and share with me some conclusions I'll be greatfull. Thx in advance.